The folks at the official Direct2Dell blog sat down with Doug Anson, one of the folks behind the custom interface Dell designed to use with the Ubuntu 8.04 Linux operating system used on the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook.

The most noticeable thing that Dell did was to create a new menu bar that hangs out on the desktop. Much like the easy mode Linux interface Asus uses for its Eee PC computers, the Dell menu places several large buttons on your screen allowing you to quickly find the applications you use the most. Out of the box, there are five buttons, for Entertainment, Games, Learning, Productivity, and Web. Clicking on any button brings up a group of icons for launching programs that fall under that category. For example, under Productivity, you’ll find OpenOffice.org.

You can also add applications to any category by hitting the + button in the bottom right corner. Or you can add entire categories by clicking the big + button in the menu itself.

If you don’t particularly like the Dell interface, you can disable it and just use the default Ubuntu/Gnome menu system. You can access the Gnome panel just fine even if you are running the Dell interface, so you don’t really have to choose between one and the other.

Or if you’d rather use the Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface, you can always install it manually.

Dell does offer a few other tweaks in addition to the menu bar. For example, the Dell Mini should be able to play most common media types out of the box, since restricted source codecs come preloaded. Dell has also partnered with Box.net to provide 2GB of free online storage to Inspiron Mini customers.

You can check out a video with Doug Anson after the break.

via Ubuntu Mini

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The other day MSI’s Andy Tung told Laptop Magazine that netbooks running Linux were returned 4 times more often than netbooks running Windows. I took that admission with a grain of salt, because MSI is just one of a number of companies pushing Linux-based netbooks. And MSI is loading SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on its MSI Wind U90 netbooks, while other companies like Acer, Dell, and Asus have chosen different distributions like Ubuntu, Linpus Linux Lite, and Xandros. So it was hard to tell if MSI’s figure was representative of anything other than MSI netbooks.

But Laptop Mag decided to follow up by asking Canonical’s marketing manager Gerry Carr about the situtation with Ubuntu-based netbooks. And Carr says that while he doesn’t have figures for Windows XP return rates, he does believe that netbooks running open source operating systems are returned more often than netbooks running Windows.

I wouldn’t go reading too much into this. It doesn’t mean that Linux isn’t as good or better than Windows in many ways. All it means is that people are returning netbooks running Linux more often than those that run an OS they’re probably more familar with. There could be any number of reasons for this.

1. Some manufacturers may not be doing a great job of customizing their Linux distros to work with the hardware. For example, the MSI Wind U90’s webcam reportedly doesn’t work with SUSE.
2. Netbook makers and retailers might not be doing as good a job as possible of letting people know that some netbooks run Linux, which is different from Windows. If you read the product description too quickly, or even look at a KDE 3.5-based menu system, you might not even realize that a netbook doesn’t run Windows until you get it home and discover that it doesn’t run Internet Explorer and MSN Messenger. Sure, there are alternatives, but many people just want their computers to run the software they’re used to.
3. Some folks may even pick up a computer knowing that it runs an OS they’re not used to, but figuring it won’t be too difficult to learn, only to be stymied by little differences like the fact that you can’t necessarily install software the way you’re used to, or that you have to jump through some hoops you’re not familar with to install restricted source software like Adobe Flash to watch YouTube videos.

So what’s the solution? Is it to offer Windows as the only option for netbooks? Of course not. But netbook makers who want to offer Linux as a low cost but powerful alternative to Windows need to do a better job of making sure the hardware is supported and that most of the features you want to work just work out of the box. And they need to do a better job of providing new and prospective customers with the information they’ll need to make the transition from Windows or OS X to Linux.

On the one hand, Asus and Acer have both decided to pre-load their netbooks with “easy” versions of their preferred Linux distributions. Users are greeted with a series of large easy to understand buttons and menus for launching internet, office, and other apps. But installing new applications or even keeping software up to date is much trickier.

I don’t see why Asus, Acer, Dell, MSI, and other companies offering Linux netbooks don’t include a short instruction manual in the box explaining some of the differences between Linux and Windows and providing a list of basic commands for whatever Linux distribution you’re using. There should also be help pages on the manufacturer website and/or links to community resources like Ubuntu.com and the Ubuntu Forums.

When Dell launched the Inspiron Mini 9 netbook in the US, the company offered customers a choice of operating systems. Americans could select Ubuntu 8.04 or Windows XP. If you happened to be in the UK, though, you were stuck with Windows — until now.

Dell is now taking orders for a version of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 running Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron in the UK. Dell is charging £269 for the base model Linux version of the Inspiron Mini, which is about $474 US. The Windows version sells for £299 or about $527.

The Linux version also comes with an 8GB solid state disk for storage while the Windows model has a 16GB disc. So you get more than just Windows for your extra cash. Both netbooks come with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM and an 8.9 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display.

You can read more about the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 in the Liliputing Product Database.

via Electric Pig and Register Hardware

JMiahMan, the developer behind EeePCLinuxOS, a custom verion of PCLinuxOS for the Eee PC has been called up for active miltary duty. The project page is down, replaced with a message saying he hopes to be able to resume development of the operating system when he returns home in a year.

The EeePCLinuxOS forums remain open, which means you might still be able to find information about the current beta release. But unless someone else picks up where JmiahMan left off, it’s unlikely this project will be significantly updated for a while. 

Youc an also find help for installing PCLinuxOS MiniMe at the EeeUser Wiki.

If you’re in the market for a netbook and looking for a bargain, you might be considering the MSI Wind U90. Like the popular Wind U100, the U90 has a large keyboard, an Intel Atom CPU, and an 80GB hard drive. It also has a smaller 8.9 inch display with a large bezel around the screen because it’s housed in the same chassis as the U100’s 10 inch display. And while the U100 has a 6-cell battery, the U90 has a 3 cell version.Finally, the netbook ships with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop instead of Windows XP.

But the U90 also costs much less than the U100. While the MSI Wind U90 is not sold in the US, you can pick one up from a Canadian retailer for about $370, including shipping. We’ve already seen a Canadian MSI Wind U90 unboxed and booted up. But what happens when you actually spend a little time with this netbook?

Laptop Magazine’s Joanna Stern has posted an in-depth review of the bargain basement version of the MSI Wind. The netbook’s smaller display is the same resolution as the larger screen on the U100, so she had no problems with the display. But she wasn’t particularly fond of the operating system.

First, SUSE doesn’t seem to have drivers for the 1.3MP webcam, making Skype video calls impossible. Second, connecting to a WiFi network was a nightmare, although the signal was quite strong once connected. And finally, Stern says she only got a feeble 1 hours and 39 minutes out of the battery, despite the fact that the MSI Wind U100 with a 6 cell battery gets more than 5 hours of battery life. I can only assume this is because SUSE lacks the power management features of some other operating systems.

In other words, if you’re not comfortable tweaking SUSE or replacing the operating system with Windows XP or another Linux distro, you might want to be careful about ordering the MSI WInd U90, especially now that the Wind U100 price is starting to come down. You can pick one up from Amazon for as little as $480.

You can read more about the MSI Wind U90 and MSI Wind U100 in the Liliputing Product Database.

A pre-release version of Ubuntu Mobile has been released. What’s Ubuntu Mobile? It’s a custom version of Ubuntu Linux designed to run on handheld MID devices with 7 to 9 inch touchscreen displays. In other words, UMPCs.

Ubuntu Mobile is not the same thing as Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which is designed for netbooks, or small, low power laptops with full keyboards. Ubuntu Mobile is optimized for devices without keyboards. it has nice big buttons that are easy to press with your fingers or a stylus and an on-screen keyboard for typing.

At its core, it’s basically a full version of Ubuntu. Anything you can run on the full desktop version of Ubuntu, you can run on Ubuntu Mobile. It just looks better (and in theory works better) on small screened devices.

While Ubuntu Mobile wasn’t designed with netbooks in mind, my first thought was to see how it runs on a netbook. You can find the answer, plus a few more pictures after the break.

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Back in July Asus announced plans to launch 2 more models in the company’s neverending Eee PC lineup: The 904HD and the 1000HD. Basically, they were to be virtually identical to the Eee PC 1000H and the Eee PC 901, except that both would have a 900MHz Intel Celeron processor instead of a 1.6GHz Intel Atom chip, and the 904HD would have an 80GB hard drive instead of a solid state disk.

Flash forward a few months, and the 904HD is already available. And it looks like Asus is preparing to ship the 1000HD, because there’s a product page for the netbook on Amazon. But if you look at the product description, you’ll notice that the 1000HD has an Atom processor, not a Celeron. This could be a typo on a pre-release order page. But it could also be an indication that the Atom shortage is drawing to an end. One of the only reasons Asus was reportedly sticking the Celeron chip into new computers was because there weren’t enough Atom processors to go around. If Intel has managed to address the supply problem, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Asus show the Celeron the door.

If the Amazon page is accurate, th eonly thing setting the Asus Eee PC 1000HD apart from the 1000H is the fact that the 1000HD runs Linux while the 1000H runs Windows XP. If you don’t want or need Windows, it looks like you can save $50 and go with the 1000HD. If you’re nto a fan of the Xandros Linux operating system that ships with it, it’s easy to install Ubuntu Eee or another operating system on your own.

thanks capriskye!

Update: Hmm… it’s looking more and more like this netbook won’t necessarily have an Atom CPU, but rather that Amazon messed up the product description.

Apparently I haven’t been the only one installing Ubuntu on an Eee PC recently. If you’re thinking of picking up an Asus Eee PC 1000, but don’t like Xandros and don’t feel feel like installing another operating system yourself? ZaReason is selling the Eee PC 1000 with Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron preloaded for no additional cost. For $599 you can choose between a model with Xandros or Ubuntu. You can also pay a bit extra for a RAM upgrade or a USB DVD-RW drive.

LinuxPlanet reviewed a ZaReason Eee PC 1000 running Ubuntu and came away impressed. Well, mostly. As is often the case when you install an off-the-shelf operating system on a computer with a non-standard resolution display, some program menus failed to fit properly on the screen. You can sort of get around this by holding the alt key and clicking your mouse on the offending window to drag it up and down so you can see any buttons (like OK or Cancel) that were hiding below your screen. But it’s kind of annoying anyway.

But overall, LinuxPlanet says the computer ran well. Compiz effects worked and the system was up to date enough that it included Firefox 3.0.1 out of the box.

My Asus Eee PC 1000H shipped with Windows XP, and it runs pretty well. But what’s the point in having an 80GB hard drive if you don’t partition it and try installing an alternate operating system every now and again? There are several Linux distributions that reportedly run well on netbooks like the 1000H with an Intel Atom CPU. But I decided to give Ubuntu Eee a try since it’s a custom version of Ubuntu designed especially for the Eee PC.

First off, if you want to install a more traditional Ubuntu desktop environment, you can totally do that. but it takes a bit of tweaking to get all of the hardware working. There are two advantages to going with a custom distro like Ubuntu Eee. First, everything including the Fn keys and the wireless drivers work out of the box. And second, you get to try out Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

I’m still trying to decide whether the latter is a good thing or not. On the one hand, Canonical has added some tweaks to Ubuntu that help the operating system take advantage of the Intel Atom processor’s power-saving abilities. On the other hand, the custom interface which is designed to make it easier to use Ubuntu on a device with a small 9 or 10 inch display can be a bit limiting at times. Fortunately, it’s easy to tweak. But I’ll get to that in a few minutes. First, here’s all you need to know about installing Ubuntu Eee. Note that while I installed the operating system on an Eee PC 1000H, it should work on the Eee PC 901 or 1000 just as well.

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People are always asking which Linux distribution is best for this device or that. And the truth is, it depends. It depends on what it is you want to do. And it often depends on whether you favor performance or ease of use or any number of other factors.

With that in mind, Phoronix has published a rather awesome article showing how the Asus Eee PC 901 performs on a series of benchmarks while running four different Linux distributions. The distros include Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 4, Fedora 10 Alpha, Mandriva 2009 beta 2 and the custom version of Xandros that comes with the Eee PC 901. In other words, these are all pretty much bleeding edge operating systems and I’m not sure I’d recommend anyone use them as a primary OS unless you’re actively looking for bugs. But each distro includes the latest kernel and system updates and, at least in theory, should be able to use the Eee PC 901’s hardware to the fullest.

So how did they do? Well, it depends. When it comes to encoding media files, Ubuntu was the clear winner. But Fedora was almost twice as fast at compiling an application. Xandros trailed behind the competition in most tests, but seemed to do well with tests that involved reading data from the solid state disk. If you’re trying to pick a new distro for you Eee PC, you should definitely check out the full article. I was surprised at just how far apart some scores were. The moral of this story is that when it comes to performance, the software matters at least as much as the hardware.

While these tests only look at the Eee PC 901, the Eee PC 1000 and 1000H have very similar hardware so I’d expect somewhat similar results. It’s important to note, however, that the 1000 has a different solid state disk than the 901, and the 1000H has a hard disk. So I wouldn’t expect the results to be identical.

If you’re like me and you just can’t help trying new things with your netbook, the Foresight Linux development team have just released a mobile version of their distribution. At 530mb, this is no stripped-down distro. You’ll find a wide range of software preinstalled and a Gnome desktop tailored for devices with smaller displays - which Foresight has borrowed from Canonical’s Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

Major packages include F-Spot Photo Manager, Firefox, Pidgin Instant Messenger, Banshee Media Player, GNOME Movie Player, and Network Manager (for painless wifi connections). Since it’s a Foresight spinoff, the excellent Conary package manager is included as well. Yet Another Linux Blog has a great writeup of what Conary is and how it works.

They’ve tested Foresight Mobile on the Asus Eee PC and Intel Classmate PC, so owners of netbooks like the MSI Wind or Acer Aspire One should have no trouble getting it running. Two known bugs currently exist on the Eee: software power off does not work, nor does the Eee’s wireless following a resume from suspend. I’ll be posting the results of my test run on the Wind later this week.

Foresight also recently announced a deal that will see their desktop OS ship on all Shuttle KPCs, which you can read more about on Shuttle’s US web site.

If you thought the $98 HiVision NB0700 was cheap, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Because the MenQ EasyPC E760 is almost 10% cheaper. Sure, that only amounts to a $9 difference, but why settle for a $98 laptop when you can get one for $89?

The MenQ EasyPC was on display at the IFA show in Berlin, where TechVideoBlog shot the video above. This tiny laptop reportedly has a Samsung ARM CPU, a 7 inch, 480 x 272 pixel display and runs Windows CE. In other words, it’s more of a portable device for connecting to the internet and running some basic applications than a full fledged computer.

But it does have a full keyboard. My guess is it’s only a matter of time before someone develops a version of Linux that can run on the EasyPC. Perhaps the same distribution that runs on the 3K RazorBook 400 and other rebranded versions of the Alpha 400. Those laptops have MIPS-based processors, not ARM, but I’m not sure how much of a technical challenge it would be to create an ARM port.

All I’m saying is, I’m reluctant to pick up anything resembling a laptop until it can run Firefox and not just Pocket Internet Explorer. On the other hand, I’m not entirely sure I want to do any web browsing at all on a 480 x 272 pixel screen.

via Engadget

Kristin Shoemaker is one half of the podcasting team Sudo Wrestling and she blogs at OStatic and Linux Librarian. She likes to take things apart and see if she can put them back together again in new and better ways.

I am pretty well past the “geek” mark, and coming up really close to the “dork” point on the Nerd Spectrum. The first computer I ever laid eyes (or fingertips) on was some sort of Tandy species (yes, back in the day when Radio Shack made computers). My first computer in school was a Commodore PET. I was online before graphical browsers were available.

I came into the Linux world pretty late in the game. It was seven years ago this month (an incidental memory — they don’t give merit badges or cookies every Linux anniversary) that I installed my first Linux flavor on my desktop.

Here are my dirty tech secrets: I have never been able to “settle” on a distribution. There are a few I don’t like, but many I do. I adore gadgets, and the crinkly feel of anti-static packaging in my hands as I liberate a new piece of hardware, but I hate buying gadgets. And I will unabashedly admit I have never installed Linux on a laptop.

The last two secrets are why I have an EeePC 701 in front of me now, and why it will remain here (likely) far past the technology’s “Best Used By” date.

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While American customers have already been told that they won’t be able to get their hands on an MSI Wind laptop running SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop anytime soon, MSI has promised to make a Linux version of the company’s popular netbook available in other parts of the world. But if you’ve been waiting (im)patiently for this model to show up, you might have to wait a little longer. German news site Heise Online reports that there’s been a recall of some Linux-based Wind laptops due to problems with the disc image used to load the computers.

What kinds of problems? It looks like someone in the MSI factory was using a machine to store family photos and download copyrighted videos including screeners of current movies. And somehow those files wound up on the computers being sent out to customers. So as Engadget suggests, if you happen to be one of the lucky few who have already received an MSI Wind running Linux you should either search around and delete any large files that might be taking up unnecessary space on your hard drive, or sit back, relax, and enjoy the movies.

While it’s certainly possible to connect a Linux-based laptop to a 3G wireless connection if you have the right hardware, most mobile operators don’t make it easy. Few offer Linux based connection software, focusing instead on Windows and/or OS X. But Nova Media’s new launch2net aims to make it easier for Eee PC customers to connect their mobile computers to their mobile internet connection.

The software is designed for Eee PCs running Xandros Linux. It simplifies the process of connecting to a mobile network using a cellphone, USB modem, or ExpressCard. Launch2net supports HSUPA, EDGE, and GPRS connections and supports network settings for carriers in most countries.

On the other hand, at 25,17 Euros or about $37.50 US, I have to wonder if the software is really worth it. The press release announcing launch2net says it eliminates “the need to enter cryptic settings like user name, password or APN address.” Because we all know what a burden it is to enter a username and password.

If you’ve had success (or problems) connecting a Linux-based Eee PC to your mobile network, let us know about your experiences in the comments!